News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Tag Archives: Berkeley

Two decades after Brown v. Board, I was only the second class to integrate at Berkeley public schools. Without that decision, I likely would not have become a lawyer and eventually be elected a Senator from California.

That’s the power a Supreme Court Justice holds.

Harris’ election to the Senate is one of the lesser reasons to celebrate Brown v. Board. Moreover, it’s far from clear that Harris wouldn’t have become a lawyer without attending an integrated public school. Plenty of African-Americans became lawyers without having that benefit.

But is it even true that Harris was in only the second class to integrate at Berkeley public schools? Based on an examination of old yearbooks from Berkeley High, Freida Powers reports that classrooms at Berkeley High were already integrated in 1963, a year before Harris was born.

Maybe Harris meant that she was part of only the second integrated class to proceed all the way from kindergarten through high school in Berkeley. But even if that’s true, and it seems implausible given the early integration of the high school, it’s ludicrous to suggest that attending a segregated kindergarten would have prevented her from becoming a lawyer and Senator.

At the Democrat debate this week, the story was retold.

However, Paul Mirengoff printed another article at Power Line Blog on Friday which reported:

I wondered whether Harris meant that she was part of only the second integrated class to proceed all the way from kindergarten through high school in Berkeley. However, according to Gateway Pundit, Harris went to school in Berkeley for only two years before moving with her mother to Canada where she attended grade school and high school.

Maybe Harris means that her class (minus her) was only the second integrated class to proceed all the way from kindergarten through high school in Berkeley. This doesn’t seem likely either given the early integration of Berkeley High.

Harris presents a misleading picture of Berkeley and, implicitly, of her family’s status. A friend who graduated from college there around the time Harris depicts tells me:

Berkeley was not segregated or racist during that era. It was one of the most liberal places in the country.

I’d like to learn a lot more about [Harris’] busing. I accept that she took a bus to elementary school, but I don’t think they were busing kids to various neighborhoods for racial reasons in Berkeley in 1971. Makes no sense at all to me.

Her mom and dad were PhDs, and she went to India during summers to stay with her mom’s family (see Wikipedia). She makes it sound like they were poverty-stricken. . .or something.

Actually, Harris herself presented evidence that she did not live in a segregated neighborhood, such that she needed to be bused to attend school with whites. During the debate, she told of a would-be friend whose parents wouldn’t let her play with Harris due to race.

I guess the message in the Democrat debates is don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

People do horrible things when they are desperate, and maybe that has something to do with the actions of George Soros as a teenage Jew in Nazi Germany. During an interview with 60 Minutes, Mr. Soros admitted to helping the Nazis steal from the Jews in World War II. (video here). That was a long time ago, and one would hope that Mr. Soros has changed. One might want to keep hoping.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about some of the recent protests around America. Actually I am not sure protests is the right word–what happened at UC Berkeley was not a protest–it was a riot. The so-called women’s march was a protest, but left a mountain of trash.

The article at The Gateway Pundit reports:

The left-wing group that helped organize the violent shut down of the Milo Yiannopoulos event at the University of California, Berkeley on Wednesday is backed by a progressive charity that is in turn funded by George Soros, the city of Tucson, a major labor union and several large companies.

Former Nazi George Soros is connected to every major protest since the election and many, if not all leading up to the election, including Black Lives Matter.

Again, if the man is organizing protests, that is fine, but a number of these protests have turned violent and destructive. I think it is time to ask Mr. Soros to take himself and his money elsewhere and bar him from funding groups that encourage the kind of behavior we have seen at UC Berkeley and other protests he has funded.

The Berkeley student senate has passed a resolution demanding that abortion, referred to as “medication abortion,” be made available on-campus so that female undergraduate and graduate students could “continue their education with little disruption.”The resolution explains that the university’s Tang Center used to perform abortions in the 1980s, but now there are no longer trained abortionists at the center.

Abortion is a right, their logic goes, and so abortion access is a right, too.

The resolution does not suggest how to fund its demand. But Aanchal Chugh, primary sponsor of the bill, told Campus Reform that school administrators should be willing to take pay cuts in order to fund on-campus abortion services. Students, she says, should not bear any financial burden.

This is the kind of logic that amoral, feeling entitled, uneducated in the value of life students come up with. Their parents are paying good money for this. It is so sad.

The article also notes:

There are five abortion providers within 15 miles of the Berkeley campus, all of which accept MediCal health insurance. FPA Women’s Health, four miles from the campus, performs free abortions for women who lack health coverage for the procedure.

Since 2006, U.S. households have received more than $18 billion in federal income tax credits for weatherizing their homes, installing solar panels, buying hybrid and electric vehicles, and other “clean energy” investments. We use tax return data to examine the socioeconomic characteristics of program recipients. We find that these tax expenditures have gone predominantly to higher-income Americans. The bottom three income quintiles have received about 10% of all credits, while the top quintile has received about 60%. The most extreme is the program aimed at electric vehicles, where we find that the top income quintile has received about 90% of all credits. By comparing to previous work on the distributional consequences of pricing greenhouse gas emissions, we conclude that tax credits are likely to be much less attractive on distributional grounds than market mechanisms to reduce GHGs.

Logically this is not surprising. Lower income people are not likely to pay the extra money for an electric car (or have a charging station). Lower income people are less likely to own their own home. People on welfare have no incentive to reduce their energy bills–welfare is paying for them. On the other side of the equation, most upper income people are in the habit of taking advantage of any ‘free’ money offered to them. Many upper income people have financial advisers who are paid to follow government tax programs and rebate programs. Upper income people may also have the money on hand to do the capital improvements required to get the tax credits, lower income people may not. Generally speaking I favor tax credits, lower taxes, etc., but I resent the fact that the tax code is used to control behavior–that is why it is so long. It really is time to build a tax code with two or three deductions that everyone can understand and that results in everyone paying some taxes. We all need skin in the game so that when our legislators start giving money away to people who do not need it, everyone will complain,.

I am not opposed to medical marijuana. I am opposed to the fact that it is over-prescribed in places where it is legal. If you pick up a Sunday paper in California, you will find multiple pages of advertisements for doctors who prescribe medical marijuana for headaches, flat feet, stress, etc. Historically, when medical marijuana is legalized in a state, the results are not significantly different from simple legalization of marijuana.

The article reports:

Under a law passed unanimously by the city council, dispensaries must set aside 2 percent of their pot for distribution to the poor.

LONG-term effects of marijuana

Rapid destruction of lung fibers and lesions (injuries) to the brain could be permanent

Reduced sexual capacity

Study difficulties: reduced ability to learn and retain information

Apathy, drowsiness, lack of motivation

Personality and mood changes

Inability to understand things clearly

I have never used marijuana, so I cannot personally verify this information; however, as a parent, I have known teenagers who have used the drug. My personal experience with one particular teenager was that heavy marijuana use in high school totally ruined his ambition and his hope for achieving the things he was capable of achieving. I believe that marijuana has a negative impact on ambition and drive for success. Someone needs to explain to me how giving people living in poverty free access to marijuana is actually going to help anyone.